Post by whitneywyckoff on Jan 30, 2017 0:30:04 GMT -5

CHAPTER 1

The teacup tumbled from Mama’s fingers, cracking the room’s silence as it shattered against the floor in a hundred white tears. Her body began to shake, but Libby caught her just before she sunk to the floor.

“No!” Mama wailed — a noise that seemed to rattle out of the Earth — as her starched white apron sopped up the puddle of tea that hadn’t yet leached into the floorboards.

Her mother limp in her arms, Libby thought for a moment she might have misheard the magistrate standing in front of her. Perhaps there was some grave mistake. Perhaps he was in the wrong cabin outside of town. Papa wasn’t even fighting in the war.

Libby faced the magistrate, his face white with shadows cast by the two blinking candles on the table. She noticed the dull light reflected against his bald head. He was wigless — despite being a Quaker, the magistrate always wore his perfectly powdered white wig in town — and he had missed a button on his silk vest. He must have been roused from his bed.

“What do you mean?” Libby asked him.

“My dear, I mean to say your father was shot dead by two men in the tavern this night,” he said.

Mama cried out again, as if hearing the news for the first time. The magistrate raised his arms slightly like he wanted to embrace her but quickly dropped them to his sides before he could reach out.

At that moment, Libby felt acutely aware of everything around the three of them. The broken porcelain, the lingering smell of roast rabbit pie and greens that Mama had made earlier for dinner, the heaviness of the air as if it were about to storm. Libby could hear her sisters, who had been sleeping in the loft, start to stir. They were probably watching from above. She looked up. But five feet beyond the candles, all Libby saw was black.

She returned her gaze to the magistrate, who seemed to wait for some kind of response. Finally, Libby gave him one.

“I don’t believe you,” she said quietly, under the whimpers of her mother. “It must have been another man.” Just hours before, Papa had been at home, eating supper with the girls before hustling off to see his friends.

The magistrate swallowed but said nothing. Libby could feel the wetness from her mother’s eyes seep through her linen shift dress. Uneasiness writhed inside her, like a worm on a hook. She tried to push the feeling away.

“Take me to him,” Libby said.

The magistrate took a quick, startled breath. “Oh my dear,” he said quickly, “I do believe that would be unwise. It isn’t a thing a young lady, such as yourself, should see. I am more than happy to make the necessary arrangements.”

“I want to see him. Immediately.” She started to move her mother to the strange chair that Papa had picked up on his travels, the one from New York that rocked back and forth as if it were riding the waves of the sea. Mama was heavy. Libby grunted from the strain, and the magistrate rushed to her side to help.

“You mustn’t go. It’s not safe,” her mother cried.

Libby ignored her as she fetched a blanket from another chair and then swaddled her like a baby to stop her from shuddering. “You’ll take me to him,” Libby said again.

The magistrate sighed. Rain began falling against the cabin’s only window, which looked out to the road that led away from the house. “Alright,” he said. “Dress and I will bring you there.” And he walked outside to wait for her in the rain.

Libby realized how naked she was. A week ago, Mama would have rebuked her for letting a stranger see her in only her undergarments. But, as Libby watched Mama weep to herself, she knew that was likely the last thought in Mama’s mind now.

Libby quickly stepped into a petticoat, pulling it over her shift, and slipped a matching green caraco jacket over her shoulders. She felt around the table near Mama’s prized looking glass for her hairpins and fixed her long light brown braid under a white cap. It was only a few weeks after Papa and some hired hands had thrashed the summer wheat harvest, but with the rain now boiling down, Libby grabbed her red cloak and headed outside.

“Libby! Don’t leave!” Mama cried, the blanket slipping from her shoulders as she rose from her seat.

But Libby was already gone, running to the barn to tack her horse. She met the magistrate in the front of the house and launched into the woods toward the village of Chester.

She forced her mind to focus on the road. Libby didn’t ride much at night, and with the rain pouring down on her, soaking her skin through her cloak and running down her face, it was hard to see. The trees, so familiar in the day, towered above her like angry giants. They shook against the rain and the wind.

But try as she might, she couldn’t dislodge the fear creeping up her spine and clamping down on her neck. Papa wasn’t the sort who would get embroiled in a tavern brawl. Especially now that English soldiers and rebel troops prowled the countryside in the great war, shooting, looting and worse. You never know who’s listening, Papa told her once. Other men were much less careful, she knew -- not like Papa. It must be a mistake, Libby tried to reassure herself. It must be someone else.

Libby felt a pin slip from her hair, and her brown braid flopped out of her cap and down her back. Those pins were expensive. But she couldn’t stop, galloping faster as she pushed Belle to nip at the feet of the magistrate's horse.

The tavern sat just on the town’s edge, along the road that wound through farms and forests into the booming city of Philadelphia, a half-day’s journey by cart. It was built from the same glittering stone that was pulled from the quarry and used in some of the newer buildings. A group of men stood sheltered from the rain on the first-floor porch. She recognized one -- Papa’s longtime friend Mr. Merinack was smoking his pipe near the door -- but he turned his head away from her as she rode up.

Libby rode past the magistrate and leapt off her horse.

“Where is he?” she demanded, her voice beaten down by raindrops. One man pointed to what looked like a bundle of rags on the side of the road. Libby grabbed a torch from beneath the tavern’s overhang and raced over before the rain could put it out.

“Miss Barraby, no!”

But the magistrate couldn’t catch her in time. The torch sizzled as she held it above what was lying in the dirt. It was a man, clean shaven, with dark hair and jacket stained with mud, his mouth open like a full moon.

It was her father.

The rain had washed away some of the blood, but still it bloomed like a malignant flower out of his chest, soaking his jacket.

“Papa,” she whispered, tears caught in her throat. Libby struggled to catch her breath as the world around became a whirl of brown and red and black. She felt as though she was riding in a fast-moving carriage, the ones she saw in town, and she couldn’t get it to stop.

Libby fell upon him, embracing him and sobbing. He was still warm.

A few moments passed, and she felt hands upon her — the men from the tavern pulled her off Papa and moved her toward shelter. She thrashed against their grip.

“Unhand me,” she cried. But they wouldn’t listen.

“Why would you bring her here?” she heard Mr. Merinack ask the magistrate behind her. “She’s just a girl.”

Libby finally wrenched against their grip and faced them. “How could this happen? How could any of you men allow this to happen?”

They looked at her and said nothing. Papa was still lying behind them in the mud.

“And why would you leave him here?”

“The funeral-undertaker is bringing a cart.”

“But it’s raining,” she pleaded, tears running down her cheeks. The half-dozen men looked back at her with empty faces. She ran back to her father, grasping under his arms to try to lift him. “Help me bring him inside.”

“The tavern mistress won’t have that,” another man said. “She says it will curse her establishment.”

“But he’s my father,” Libby cried, struggling to lift Papa’s body.

The men looked at each other, rain running down their faces, and reluctantly, two came over and lifted Papa by his shoulders and feet. Another held his midsection as Libby untied her red cloak and wrapped it around him. Mr. Merinack had mysteriously disappeared. She led the four of them to the porch and Libby pushed open the tavern doors.

Inside were two long tables of men and a few women drinking ale and playing cards by the light of flickering candles. Seeing them, the tavern owner’s wife slammed down her pitcher of ale. A fiddler in the corner stopped playing.

“No, not in here.” She held up her hands to block them from coming inside, but Libby brushed past her. A few men gave up their seats, and Libby cleared a spot of its empty mugs so the men could lay down Papa’s body.

She sat by her father’s head and stroked his hair.

“Papa,” Libby said. She gently closed his open mouth, tears still burning her eyes. Wrapped in her red cloak, Papa’s fatal wounds were concealed. It looked almost as though he could be sleeping.

The tavern had gone quiet, no singing and the dice games had stopped. The men all stood behind her. Even the tavern mistress was silent. Libby put her head down on the table and cried into the wood.

It seemed to take hours for the funeral-undertaker’s wagon to arrive. Finally, two men came into the tavern and brought Papa into their cart. They could take her to make arrangements for her father.

It had stopped raining outside, though the road was full of a gushing mud that caught their wagon’s wheels. Before Libby joined her father inside the wagon, she turned to the magistrate, still standing beside her.

“Who was responsible?”

“We’re not certain of the men’s names. But several of the men here said it was two British redcoat soldiers,” the magistrate said.

Post by amyk on Jan 30, 2017 0:47:32 GMT -5

Excellent! I would love to read the whole thing.

One point that I think was a missed opportunity...

It's raining out and Libby is crying. If she is soaked as you mention earlier, how can she distinguish what is her tears and what is the rain? Is the rain cold but her tears hot? Or perhaps she doesn't even realize they are falling until she gets his body inside the tavern. Once she dries her face and finds it wet again and again she realizes that they are falling (almost being disconnected from her body in shock and grief)

Post by heatheranne on Jan 30, 2017 6:37:22 GMT -5

I got sucked into your writing!I loved the contrast of the highly emotional reaction of her mother and the more analytical (if still emotional) reaction of Libby: she has to see for herself. Tells me something about her character. Because of this it bothered me a bit that it took her so long to ask what had happened. I would have expected her to ask this when she first hear about her father or when she saw her father's body. I liked the detail of one of her father's friend turning away when she rides up to the tavern. Makes me think he might be guilty of some involvement or perhaps unwilling to face her in his own grief?You have a great voice!

Post by gingermerante on Jan 30, 2017 22:15:13 GMT -5

I really enjoyed this and would absolutely read more. The scene was very vivid and I was able to get a clear image of her father laying in the rain, bloody and drenched. The first few lines, I had to read over a couple of times, maybe a bit too wordy, but other than that, great!!

Post by Ninja Danger on Feb 5, 2017 18:56:15 GMT -5

Hello, whitneywyckoff,

Great work here. You might want to iron out a few of the adjectives in these pages as an over-abundance might slow some agents down, but I would be surprised if you didn't receive some requests from agents if you went out with your query and this sample.